Valendine
by sapereaude13
Summary: She is not unfamiliar with war. Though not a soldier by trade, a soldier she has been. Another night before Bahamut story. Of war and the jitters on a night before battle. Balthier/Ashe.


_From this day to the ending of the world,  
But we in it shall be remember'd,  
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.  
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me  
Shall be my brother_

-Henry V, Act IV

--

The aerodrome is hot. The exhaust from dozens of airships keeps the air stifling and warm despite the close proximity to the sea, and Ashe is nearly faint with the smell of oil and grease. Sleep has eluded her thus far tonight, though their accommodations at Reddas' manse are opulent compared to the hard-packed soil of fields too many to name where she's lain these past months.

Though the Strahl is far from the newest or largest ship in the Balfonheim aerodrome, to Ashe it is familiar enough. The steps are down, though naught but the emergency lights have been left on. A pale reddish light like the dawn breaking, lined up in succession on each subsequent metal stair.

She is not unfamiliar with war. Though not a soldier by trade, a soldier she has been. Guerilla tactics with the resistance, the haphazardly placed explosive, the late night munitions raids. Ashe knows something of fighting. Though more monsters than men have fallen by her blade of late, she has taken the life of a man before and is prepared to do it again come morning. The hands of a Princess should be delicate, but her palms are crisscrossed with miniature scars and scrapes, her nails bitten or broken to the quick.

The arm that two years earlier had never held a sword is now steady and firm, allowing her to wield blade against most any foe. She's known battle, has felt her heartbeat quicken upon some fiend's attack. A tent has been home for weeks now, and fighting an everyday occurrence. So why is sleep so difficult tonight after so many other nights? Perhaps knowing that tomorrow is the day of days, the one upon which her country's hopes rest. If Vayne does not fall in the morning, Dalmasca will surely be bombed into submission. And she'll be dead.

Though it is dark throughout the ship, still he tinkers with it. The fate of her country probably means little to him. Instead, Balthier fights to right his father's wrongs, though no one expected or required him to do so. His hands have been bloodied like hers these past months, and as she watches his deft fingers testing switches on the control panels, she wants to make him stop. He needs the most rest since he must fly and must be alert.

To think that a sky pirate would be one of a deposed Princess' army of six. She smiles at the back of him, sleeves rolled up and hair askew. He's been to bed already, but it appears he found no rest in the manse the same as her. She hears him curse then, leaning back in his pilot's seat with a heavy sigh. Ashe imagines that the Strahl is in perfect condition – her owner just wishes for her to be better than perfect.

She makes some noise in the doorway. "Come on out if you're intent to spy on me," he tells her.

Fran's seat is cool and firm, much like the Viera herself. Ashe settles in, closing her eyes. Here, amidst blinking lights and the smell of engines, Ashe finds rest. The fluffy pillows and down blankets soothed her little, but it differs here.

"As a judge, did you ever go to war?"

Her question does not rattle him. Once he told her the truth of him on Phon Coast, his answers to her questions have come more readily and without complaint. "No. Left right after completing my training."

"What was that like?"

She hears him pull something from beneath his seat. Opening her eyes again, she spies a small flask of something in his hand as he twists off the cap. "Lots of running." He smiles and shakes his head. "Lots and lots of running. The judges magister alone are worthy of riding those damned birds into battle, those under them must march. They run, same as any of the other foot soldiers."

Ashe knows little of Archadian armaments other than how hardened and cold the steel of it is. Dalmascan arms were lighter, better for the desert climes but not for close quarters. It was why so many fell to Archadia at Nalbina. "They made you run in your armor?"

"With sword," he explains. "Sword and shield. There was a large hill just outside of the barracks, edge of the capital. Away from the swankier climes, naturally. Every morning, in full armor, up that damned hill. If you could storm Valendine Hill, they said, you could face anything." He sips from the flask. "Hated every second."

Her training was simpler. She, Vossler, a sword and the sewers. "So you saw no fighting in your time?"

He looks at her curiously. "Wouldn't you be better off swapping war stories with Basch? I've no glorious battles to recount for you, no dodging of arrows and cannon, no tales of glory."

She shrugs. "We are the same, you and I."

"How so?" He holds out the flask to her, and she takes it. The drink burns, and she wonders if it's really just siphoned fuel from the Strahl's supply.

"We've both fought creatures, we have since the day we met." She idly tilts the flask back and forth, hearing the liquid slosh about within. "Small skirmishes with men. You in your means of employment I imagine and myself as insurgent."

"Resistance," he corrects her with a grin.

"Quite," she responds with a smile but grows solemn once more. "Why do I feel like tomorrow we are truly going to war?"

He gestures for the flask, and she returns it but he doesn't sip yet. "Well, the sky will be full of warships. You'll have never seen the like, I wager. Vayne'll have the whole fleet out, and I imagine your Uncle's got some powerful friends of his own." She imagines the terror her citizens will face, cowering in her capital below, and she hopes there will be some Dalmascans attending to the paling though Archadia occupies the city.

"Are we prepared, do you think?"

Balthier drinks from the flask and looks thoughtful. "I don't see how you can actually prepare for this more than we already have. Besides, you're our glorious leader…shouldn't you be here to get the men under your command ready and bolster _my_ confidence? I'm not of a mind to bolster yours instead, Princess."

She looks down. "I wasn't asking you to."

They remain in silence a few minutes. She thinks of her small ragtag group, prepared to storm the sky fortress with her in several hours. Will any fall? Will it be the same as battles she's already faced? Will it be true war like it is in her memories of her country's fall, like it is in the stories Basch is reluctant to share?

He stands, screwing the cap back on the flask. She is surprised when he grabs her by the hand and pulls her to her feet. "Do you have your sword and shield?" he asks.

"What?" His hand is warm on hers, and she wonders if he'd been sampling from the flask for some time before she arrived to interrupt him. "They're at the manse, why?"

"Well, you're hardly armored or prepared, but there's no time." He disappears out to the back of the ship where he and Fran have some small cabins. She follows, seeing him pull a long coat from his oaken armoire. "Here, put that on."

The coat is made for a man of Balthier's size and is a heavy, coarse material meant for blizzards. He rummages through a few drawers and gets close in her space, raising a flush in her cheeks. He wrenches open zippered coat pockets and shoves handfuls of coins from every city in Ivalice into them. With each handful he shoves into the nearly dozen pockets, the heavier it weighs on her shoulders until she can barely stand. He takes another coat from the armoire and does the same until the pair of them look absolutely ridiculous.

"Can you walk alright?" he asks her, and she stumbles around the cabin floor, jingling with the weight of the coins.

"I think so?"

He smiles and reaches inside the coat, his fingers grazing the thin material of her blouse as he shoves more coins into a series of inside pockets until she almost falls against him with the weight of it all. "There, that's better. Let's go."

Balthier had to have added the same weight of trinkets and coinage to his own coat, but it doesn't seem to bother him much at all as he drags her out of his cabin and down the Strahl's steps. There are few people in the streets, just a few drunken sailors and pirates looking to rob them. Balthier is giddy with drink as he keeps an arm around her waist, pulling her along the planked roads of Balfonheim.

They're nearly on the edge of town before she asks. "Where the hell are we going? What are we doing out here?"

He's marched her clear to the outskirts of the port, the planks turning to dirt and finally to grasslands. The night is full of stars and beautiful. The world carries on around them, and she breathes in the air, the weight of the coat nearly making her faint.

Balthier points to the crest of the first hill of the Steppe which didn't seem so steep during the day. The starlight keeps his face bright and his eyes dark. She knows now why she came to the Strahl, why she came to him. The children have not been to war. Fran is too reticent, Basch too set in his ways. But Balthier is spontaneous and knows bits and pieces of war the same as she. Neither have experienced what will happen tomorrow, but the pair of them are stubborn enough to face it together.

He's been a brother in combat, has shed his blood with and for her. But as he looks at her with such adoration and drunken joy, she sees so much more than just someone she will fight alongside. The coins inside his coat jangle as he leans forward, grasping her hands with excitement. "It's not exactly Valendine, but it will do."

She wants to cry. That he would do this for her, that he could see her fear and know just how to make it better. _"If you could storm Valendine Hill, they said, you could face anything."_

His hands, just as roughened and scarred from battle as hers, find her cheeks and he kisses her, the bulk of his coat bumping against the bulk of hers, drawing a laugh from her against his lips. He doesn't bother to be gentle, pressing quick kisses against her cheeks and forehead before stealing her lips again until she has to push him away.

"Valendine!" he announces to the night with a fist in the air, probably with far more enthusiasm than he'd ever had in military training. She laughs until she cries as he begins charging up the hill, coins glinting briefly in the starlight before falling from his pockets and onto the grassy plain. He turns back. "Come on, soldier!"

She grips the sides of the coat before she trips on it and starts moving. How he could do this in a perfect run she can't imagine. "Valendine!" she screams with a heaving breath, pushing her body to charge up the hill. There are tiny rocks lodged in the soil, and they press hard into her shoes as she runs. The coins crunch inside the pockets, keeping a steady bouncing rhythm as she chases him.

Balthier reaches the top a minute later, both fists in the air. "Valendine!" She watches him toss the coat off and onto the ground. "Valendine!"

She can barely breathe with the weight of the coat and the bubbling excitement within her. If she could choose anyone to fight by her side the next day, she would choose Balthier. Ashe has no sword or shield, but she has the weight of the coins and the weight of her people as she reaches the hilltop. "Valendine!" bursts forth from her lips, the burden of battle floating up and into the heavens.

Balthier wrenches the coat open, shoving it from her shoulders and onto the ground. She reaches for him, pulling him down to dirt and grass. They've slept under these skies for weeks, months in tents or in the open air. Before as begrudging business partners, then as comrades, then as friends and now as something more. He holds her close, their bed of coin not making a lick of difference as they embrace.

When it is time to return, he keeps her no more than an arm's length away. "Fraternizing amongst the ranks, Princess? That's…hmm, twenty lashes and latrine duty for me."

She leans into him as they stumble down the hillside. "What if your commander ordered it so?"

"Still a breach of protocol," he teases her. "I don't suppose you'll have our beloved Captain mete out the punishment?"

His skin is warm beneath her fingertips as she runs her hand beneath his shirt and around his waist. "I need you to fly us to war, sir."

"And I shall," he declares with a spirited kiss to the top of her head. "Oh dear, another five lashes. Commander, I am enraptured."

They make it back to the manse, not bothering to seek separate arrangements. They're both so exhausted from earlier that their tangled mass of limbs in a shared bed find the solace they need in sleep and one another. The history books would surely report the attack on Vayne Solidor, but Ashe knows that the bonds forged with brothers and lovers in arms would probably not warrant a mention. And so she will cherish it all the more.

--

A/N: This was mainly inspired by the episode "Currahee" from HBO's Band of Brothers.


End file.
